The 10 Commandments

Posted in Money Matters on August 15, 2002

The following is “The 10 Commandments,” this week’s article by Al Thomas, author of If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It. Click ‘Read More’ below for the article text.

The 10 Commandments

by Al Thomas


Wall Street has been preaching for years and years to investors how and where to put their money. The “experts” have put forth these ideas for so long that they seem to be carved in stone just like Moses did with God’s 10 Commandments. The only difference is that what Wall Street preaches is lies that will make you broke.


It will be difficult in this short space to elaborate on them, but please stop and give a long think to all of these commandments.


1. Do research

2. Buy and Hold

3. Dollar Cost Average

4. Diversify

5. Buy a good stock and put it away

6.You can’t afford to be out of the market

7. Never try to time the market

8. Rearrange your portfolio with age

9. Your broker will watch your account

10.The market always comes back



The first 3 are preached by every broker who breathes. Consider that if you can find out about a company so can everyone else, so what good is it? If you haven’t figured out “Buy and Hold” by now you are either broke or have not owned any stock. Dollar Cost Average is only for suckers – you could have bought Enron from $90 to nothing. When your broker says diversify he means he doesn’t know what to do with your money so he recommends putting some here and some there and a little in the safety deposit box or under the bed and hopes some of it will make a profit. He doesn’t know.


Hope is the most expensive word in the dictionary of any investor.


Buy a good stock and put it away. That is what the talking heads in CNBC-TV have been saying. Brokers, analysts and financial planners touted Enron last year as a quality stock. Even their bonds carried an investment grade rating. I don’t mean to leave out Xerox, Global Crossing, Pan American (for you old timers) and about a thousand others if you want to take the time to look. I am not exaggerating. In 2000 there were more than 1,000 stocks on the Nasdaq that lost 90% of their value.


Charles Schwab says you can’t afford to be out of the market. He wants to keep your money. I’m sure he will say you can’t time the market, but there are many of us who have been doing it for years. When they say that, I know they have not taken the time to learn their trade – investing to make money. Rearrange your portfolio with age should be rearrange your portfolio to make a profit and not lose what you have.


Your broker will watch your account… get smaller. He never tells you to sell those losers or put in a stop-loss order. And you know because you have been told so many times that the market always comes back – except when it doesn’t, especially to the stocks you own.


Put these lies, oops, commandments, up on your wall and recite them to your broker when he calls, or you might want to send him a copy.


Copyright Albert W. Thomas. All rights reserved. Author of “If It Doesn’t Go Up, Don’t Buy It!” www.mutualfundmagic.com. Comments to al@mutualfundmagic.com.